Lady and the Cats

I started thinking of the Siamese Cat Song from the Disney animated classic Lady and the Tramp a few days ago. I don’t know why that song started running through my head. It must be at least thirty years since I have seen that movie. Whatever the reason, I decided to see if I could find a clip of that scene on YouTube. I wasn’t surprised to find the clip available. I was surprised to learn that the Siamese Cat Song is now considered racist. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised at all. Indeed, I should not have been surprised that Disney included a trigger warning on Lady and the Tramp on its streaming service Disney +.

Two Siamese cats sing the song. Because they are Siamese cats, the animators thought it would be amusing to make them Siamese. The song is in the musical style of traditional Siamese or Thai culture. The cats sing and speak in a vaguely Asian accent. Somehow, this is racist and offensive. Evidently, depicting Siamese cats as Siamese reinforces anti-Asian stereotypes.

The Siamese cats are not the only offensive characters in Lady and the Tramp. There is a Scottish terrier who speaks and acts stereotypically Scottish. There is also a Bulldog who speaks in a cockney accent, a Russian Borzoi with a Russian accent, a Dachshund with a German accent, and, worst of all, a Chihuahua who is Mexican. There is also a human owner of an Italian restaurant who happens to be a stereotypical Italian. Obviously, Lady and the Tramp is a breeding ground of bigotry. Its a wonder Disney didn’t ban the movie altogether.

So much racism in one picture

I have to wonder, is anyone truly offended by these ethnic stereotypes? Are there any Thais who feel belittled or marginalized by seeing Siamese cats singing a song in Siamese style? Are people motivated to discriminate against Asians or commit hate crimes as a result of this silly song? What about the other stereotypes? Are Russians, English, Germans, and Mexicans insulted by the portrayal of animals associated with their nationalities? Perhaps they are more inclined to be amused or flattered. It is not often that one sees any portrayal of Thai culture in American media.

I am reminded of Warner Brothers’ decision to retire the character Speedy Gonzales on the grounds that the Fastest Mouse in all of Mexico was offensive to Latinos. Warner Brothers backtracked when it discovered that Speedy Gonzales was well-liked in Latin America. After all, the Mexican mouse was a spunky character who regularly got the better of El Gringo Pussy Gato. I also recall that American Indians are less offended by Indian-named sports franchises than is generally supposed.

In the live-action remake of Lady and the Tramp, Disney changed the Siamese cats to a breed of cats not associated with any nationality. The song the cats sing is generic. I do not know what Disney did about the dog pound scene. I am certain there were no Hispanic chihuahuas. That is one way to solve the problem of negative national stereotyping. Aunt Jemina and Uncle Ben have been erased as mascots. The Indian Maiden in Land o’ Lakes has disappeared.

The answer is to avoid giving offense by including no national or ethnic characteristics at all. The solution is to make every character bland and generic. So much for diversity in our entertainment media

It seems that the only people bothered by supposedly offensive representations in the media are a small number of professional activists. These are people whose lives depend on finding reasons to be upset. That brings me to my next question. Why does anyone care what a small number of hypersensitive busybodies with a perpetual chip on their shoulder think? Why do we need to put trigger warnings to appease the unappeasable? Why not consign these people to their safe spaces and let the rest of us enjoy life?

The sooner we start ignoring the eternally offended wokescolds and get on with our lives, the better we all will be. We may start seeing entertainment we actually want to see again. Who knows? Maybe, Disney will start making money again.

Passover

At sundown today, the Jews begin the celebration of Pesach or Passover, to commemorate what is perhaps the most significant event of Jewish history, the liberation of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. This year, Passover lasts from the evening of April 22 until the evening of April 30.

The Israelites Eat the Passover (illustration from the 1728 Figures de la Bible) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Exodus 12

The Passover

¹ The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, ² “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. ³ Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb^[a] for his family, one for each household. ⁴ If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. ⁵ The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. ⁶ Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. ⁷ Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. ⁸ That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. ⁹ Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire—head, legs and inner parts. ¹⁰ Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. ¹¹This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover.

¹² “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD. ¹³ The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

¹⁴ “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD—a lasting ordinance. ¹⁵ For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. ¹⁶ On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat—that is all you may do.

¹⁷ “Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. ¹⁸ In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. ¹⁹ For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born. ²⁰ Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.”

²¹ Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. ²² Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. ²³ When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.

²⁴ “Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. ²⁵ When you enter the land that the LORD will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. ²⁶ And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ ²⁷ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped. ²⁸ The Israelites did just what the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron.

²⁹ At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. ³⁰ Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.

The Exodus

³¹ During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have requested. ³²Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me.”

³³ The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country. “For otherwise,” they said, “we will all die!” ³⁴ So the people took their dough before the yeast was added, and carried it on their shoulders in kneading troughs wrapped in clothing. ³⁵ The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. ³⁶ The LORD had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians.

³⁷ The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. ³⁸ Many other people went up with them, as well as large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds. ³⁹ With the dough they had brought from Egypt, they baked cakes of unleavened bread. The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves.

⁴⁰ Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt^[b] was 430 years. ⁴¹ At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the LORD’s divisions left Egypt. ⁴² Because the LORD kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the LORD for the generations to come.

Passover Restrictions

⁴³The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “These are the regulations for the Passover:

“No foreigner is to eat of it. ⁴⁴ Any slave you have bought may eat of it after you have circumcised him, ⁴⁵ but a temporary resident and a hired worker may not eat of it.

⁴⁶ “It must be eaten inside one house; take none of the meat outside the house. Do not break any of the bones. ⁴⁷ The whole community of Israel must celebrate it.

⁴⁸ “An alien living among you who wants to celebrate the LORD’s Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised; then he may take part like one born in the land. No uncircumcised male may eat of it. ⁴⁹ The same law applies to the native-born and to the alien living among you.”

⁵⁰ All the Israelites did just what the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron. ⁵¹ And on that very day the LORD brought the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.

Although Christians do not generally celebrate Passover, it does have great significance for Christianity. The Last Supper of Jesus and his disciples was a Passover seder.

Luke 22

Judas Agrees to Betray Jesus

¹ Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread, called the Passover, was approaching, ² and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people. ³ Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve. ⁴ And Judas went to the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. ⁵ They were delighted and agreed to give him money. ⁶He consented, and watched for an opportunity to hand Jesus over to them when no crowd was present.

The Last Supper

⁷ Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. ⁸Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.”

⁹ “Where do you want us to prepare for it?” they asked.

¹⁰ He replied, “As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, ¹¹ and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ ¹² He will show you a large upper room, all furnished. Make preparations there.”

¹³ They left and found things just as Jesus had told them. So they prepared the Passover.

¹⁴ When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. ¹⁵ And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. ¹⁶ For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.”

¹⁷ After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. ¹⁸ For I tell you I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.”

¹⁹ And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”

²⁰ In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. ²¹ But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. ²² The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed, but woe to that man who betrays him.” ²³ They began to question among themselves which of them it might be who would do this.

Jesus’s crucifixion is regarded as a sacrifice like the Passover lamb and Christians regard the deliverance of the Hebrews from Egypt as a foreshadowing of Christ’s deliverance of the whole human race from the slavery of sin.

²⁶ Such a high priest meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. ²⁷ Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. ²⁸ For the law appoints as high priests men who are weak; but the oath, which came after the law, appointed the Son, who has been made perfect forever.  (Hebrews 7:26-28)

²⁸ so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.  (Hebrews 9:28)

So, Chag Sameach to any Jewish readers.

Arians

Lately, I have been amusing myself by watching videos about the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Those who are not familiar with the Jehovah’s Witnesses know them as the people who go door to door to spread their religion. Those who are somewhat familiar with the Jehovah’s Witnesses know them as a rather authoritarian cult whose members do not celebrate their birthdays, Christmas, Halloween, or anything else that might be enjoyable. I find this sect intriguing because it seems to be a revival of Arianism. The Jehovah’s Witnesses seem to be Arians.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by REX/Shutterstock (504335q)
Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall
VARIOUS

Arians? Am I suggesting the Jehovah’s Witnesses are Nazis? Of course not. I said Arians, not Aryans. An Arian is a follower of the third and fourth-century priest and theologian Arius. Arius taught doctrines which became known as Arianism.

One of the most perplexing problems of early Christian theology was the question of just who and what Jesus Christ actually was. Jesus was called the Son of God in the Bible. What did that actually mean? If Christianity was a polytheistic religion, the issue might have been resolved easily. Jesus, the Son of God, might have been a lesser deity like Apollo, the son of Zeus. Jesus could have been a demigod like Hercules. However, Christianity is a monotheistic religion. There is only room for one God.

So what was Jesus? Was he the same divine being as the God of the Old Testament? Was Jesus a highly favored and blessed man? Was he an angel or a being halfway between God and man? The solution most Christians eventually settled on was that Jesus is God. In mainstream Christianity, there is one God, composed of three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each person is eternal and uncreated. Jesus is God the Son who became fully human while remaining fully divine.

This is a subtle doctrine, and it should not be surprising some dissenters preferred a less complex doctrine. One of these dissenters was a priest and presbyter from Cyrenaica named Arius. It is not entirely clear precisely what Arius preached and to what extent he founded the movement known as Arianism. Few of Arius’s writings survive. His opponents destroyed his works. What little survives exists in quotations used by polemicists seeking to refute Arianism. Arius, or at least the Arians, taught that Jesus was created by God the Father and, therefore, was kind of a sub-God, divine, but subordinate to the Father. The Arians rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.

The Trinitarians, led by Alexander, the Patriarch of Alexandria bitterly opposed the Arians. The clashes between partisans of the two factions became so fierce; that they seemed to threaten the peace of the Roman Empire. This did not please the Emperor Constantine. Part of the reason Constantine supported Christianity was that he hoped the religion would bring unity to the Empire.

When Constantine was not happy, nobody was happy

Now, infighting among Christians was threatening to tear it apart. To resolve the Arian controversy, Constantine summoned the leaders of the Christian Church to the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325. This Ecumenical Council condemned Arius and the Arians as heretics and formally established the doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinitarian doctrine became a part of what came to be Catholic or Orthodox Christianity. Catholic and Orthodox are terms used to refer to the Western and Eastern branches of what might be called Nicene Christianity, so Nicene is the word I will use.

Sadly the story that St. Nicholas aka Santa Claus punched Arius at the Council does not seem to be true

 

The Council of Nicaea settled the Arian controversy within the Roman Empire. Although several Emperors supported Arianism, the doctrine died out among the Romans. Nicene Christianity was the official form of Christianity in the Empire. This was not true outside the Empire. At about the same time as the Council of Nicaea, missionaries led by the Goth Ulfias were already spreading Christianity to the Germans who lived beyond the frontiers. Ulfias happened to be an Arian, so the Germans he converted to Christianity were Arian Christians, with one important exception.

In time, religion became associated with ethnic identity. To be a Roman was to be a Nicene Christian. A German was an Arian. This complicated relations between the Germans and the Romans, Especially when German tribes like the Goths and the Vandals invaded the Western Roman Empire and set up their own kingdoms. The Romans found themselves ruled not only by barbarians, which was humiliating enough but by barbarians who were heretics. This religious difference meant that when the Eastern Romans, under Emperor Justinian, sought to reconquer the western provinces, they could count on a sympathetic population of Nicene Christians. The German kings could not entirely trust their formerly Roman subjects.

Early Medieval Arians

The one German tribe that was an exception to German Arianism was the Franks. The Franks were still pagan when they overran Gaul. In 508, the Frankish King Clovis I decided he ought to convert to Christianity. This was expected. Paganism had become unfashionable among both Romans and Germans. What was unexpected was that Clovis resolved to convert to Nicene Christianity. This decision was to change the course of European history.

Clovis

Being Nicene Christians, the Franks had the same advantage the Eastern Romans had when warring with the Arian Germans. A Frankish king who fought against the Visigoths or Lombards was not simply fighting a simple war over territory and loot. He was fighting a holy war against heretics, often with the support of the Papacy. This advantage helped the Franks to defeat the other German kingdoms and to become the predominant state in post-Roman Europe.

Over time, the Arian German rulers began to convert to the Catholic faith the majority of their subjects. The King of the Visigoths converted in 589. The kings of the Lombards held out until 671. For the next 800 years, Christianity in Europe was Nicene, trinitarian Christianity.

This began to change with the Protestant Reformation. The Reformers, such as Luther and Calvin, had many differences with the Roman Catholic Church but were all orthodox in their essential doctrines. They were all Nicene Trinitarians. Nevertheless, once prevailing orthodoxies begin to be questioned, there is no stopping, and it wasn’t long before some decidedly unorthodox doctrines began to be preached. This was a hazardous practice since the one thing both Catholics and Protestants agreed on was that heretics should be persecuted. Many heterodox, nontrinitarian sects were founded after the Protestant Reformation, including the Unitarians, the Quakers, and the Deists.

In North America. Such sects flourished in the more tolerant atmosphere of the North American colonies, especially during the Great Awakening. Another wave of unorthodox religious movements began during the Second Great Awakening of the 1820s to 1840s. This second wave included the Shakers and the Latterday Saints or Mormons.

Charles Taze Russel

Charles Taze Russell founded the organization that would become the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1870, sometime after the Second Great Awakening. He was clearly influenced by restorationist and Aventist strands of that earlier movement. Like many preachers during the Awakening, Russell strove to restore Christianity to its primitive beginnings. Russell also taught that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent. As part of his quest to restore the original doctrines of Christianity, Russell rejected the concept of the Trinity. Instead, he believed that Jesus was a being created by Jehovah. He thought that Jesus was the Archangel Michael. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have held on to such unorthodox doctrines to the present day.

It may not be strictly accurate to call the Jehovah’s Witnesses “Arians.” There are differences between their views and the teachings of the Arians of ancient times. Still, it is interesting, to me at least, how old ideas get revived in new forms. Perhaps there really is nothing truly new under the sun.